The free energy principle

Do you know about the free energy principle? Neuroscientist Karl Friston has devoted much of his time and energy to developing this principle. Shaun Raviv writes in Wired,

With this idea, Friston believes he has identified nothing less than the organizing principle of all life, and all intelligence as well. “If you are alive,” he sets out to answer, “what sorts of behaviors must you show?”



To get a sense of the potential implications of this theory, all you have to do is look at the array of people who darken the FIL’s doorstep on Monday mornings. Some are here because they want to use the free energy principle to unify theories of the mind, provide a new foundation for biology, and explain life as we know it. Others hope the free energy principle will finally ground psychiatry in a functional understanding of the brain. And still others come because they want to use Friston’s ideas to break through the roadblocks in artificial intelligence research. But they all have one reason in common for being here, which is that the only person who truly understands Karl Friston’s free energy principle may be Karl Friston himself.

...Friston’s father was a civil engineer who worked on bridges all around England, and his family moved around with him. In just his first decade, the young Friston attended six different schools. His teachers often didn’t know what to do with him, and he drew most of his fragile self-esteem from solitary problem solving. At age 10 he designed a self-righting robot that could, in theory, traverse uneven ground while carrying a glass of water, using self-correcting feedback actuators and mercury levels. At school, a psychologist was brought in to ask him how he came up with it. “You’re very intelligent, Karl,” Friston’s mother reassured him, not for the last time. “Don’t let them tell you you’re not.” He says he didn’t believe her.

...Friston spent much of the early 1990s using a relatively new technology—PET scans—to try to understand what was going on inside the brains of people with schizophrenia.

...Free energy is the difference between the states you expect to be in and the states your sensors tell you that you are in. Or, to put it another way, when you are minimizing free energy, you are minimizing surprise.

A single-celled organism has the same imperative to reduce surprise that a brain does.

The only difference is that, as self-organizing biological systems go, the human brain is inordinately complex: It soaks in information from billions of sense receptors, and it needs to organize that information efficiently into an accurate model of the world. “It’s literally a fantastic organ in the sense that it generates hypotheses or fantasies that are appropriate for trying to explain these myriad patterns, this flux of sensory information that it is in receipt of,” Friston says. In seeking to predict what the next wave of sensations is going to tell it—and the next, and the next—the brain is constantly making inferences and updating its beliefs based on what the senses relay back, and trying to minimize prediction-error signals.

...When the brain makes a prediction that isn’t immediately borne out by what the senses relay back, Friston believes, it can minimize free energy in one of two ways: It can revise its prediction—absorb the surprise, concede the error, update its model of the world—or it can act to make the prediction true. If I infer that I am touching my nose with my left index finger, but my proprioceptors tell me my arm is hanging at my side, I can minimize my brain’s raging prediction-error signals by raising that arm up and pressing a digit to the middle of my face.

So what happens when our prophecies are not self-fulfilling? What does it look like for a system to be overwhelmed by surprise? The free energy principle, it turns out, isn’t just a unified theory of action, perception, and planning; it’s also a theory of mental illness. When the brain assigns too little or too much weight to evidence pouring in from the senses, trouble occurs. Someone with schizophrenia, for example, may fail to update their model of the world to account for sensory input from the eyes. Where one person might see a friendly neighbor, Hillary might see a giant, evil crow. “If you think about psychiatric conditions, and indeed most neurological conditions, they are just broken beliefs or false inference—hallucinations and delusions,” Friston says.

...The free energy principle offers a unifying explanation for how the mind works and a unifying explanation for how the mind malfunctions. It stands to reason, then, that it might also put us on a path toward building a mind from scratch.

...a free energy agent always generates its own intrinsic reward: the minimization of surprise.

Read more here. I am sure you will understand this better than I.

Why did 100,000 African American women favor DeSantis over Gillum?

William Mattox reports in the Wall Street Journal that newly elected Florida Governor Ron DeSantis owes his victory to minority women.

...about 100,000 African-American women who unexpectedly chose him over the black Democratic candidate, Andrew Gillum.

...What explains Mr. DeSantis’ surprising support from African-American women? Two words: school choice.

More than 100,000 low-income students in Florida participate in the Step Up For Students program, which grants tax-credit funded scholarships to attend private schools. Even more students are currently enrolled in the state’s 650 charter schools.

A social-media campaign by the Florida Federation for Children reminded voters of Mr. Gillum’s strong opposition to school choice. The issue also helped solidify Mr. DeSantis’s support among Latinos at an impressive 44%.

The unexpected outcome of the Florida governor’s race should encourage Republicans nationwide to pitch their education agenda to minority voters. It should also prompt Democrats to rethink their blind allegiance to teachers unions.

Read more here.

"Give to them what you would want for yourself if one day you are walking the same path.

Marc Agronin (@MarcAgronin) is a geriatric psychiatrist at Miami Jewish Health and the author of “The End of Old Age: Living a Longer, More Purposeful Life" and "The Dementia Caregiver: A Guide to Caring for Someone with Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Neurocognitive Disorders.” Nevertheless, he writes at The Wall Street Journal,

It’s natural to feel uncertain, afraid, and even turned off when first trying to interact with someone with dementia--especially when you have an emotional tie. Fortunately, there are several approaches to overcome these reactions.

To start, be an empathic friend by imagining yourself in the shoes of the affected person. They often feel deep frustration, sadness and embarrassment as their cognitive impairment makes it increasingly difficult to manage previous expectations and roles. As a result, they may begin withdrawing from activities and relationships. You can turn your empathy into action by initiating contact without waiting for them to ask. When together, put aside your past expectations and assumptions and simply listen to them and observe what has changed. Your presence in the moment is key.

As you get a better sense for their limitations, avoid posing open-ended questions (e.g., “What would you like to do?”) or suggesting tasks or activities that might be too challenging. Instead, offer several choices that tap into their ongoing interests and abilities (e.g., “I bet you would love to do this with me.”). If they are unsure of something or unaware of who you are, gently and simply reorient them without feeling obligated to explain the unexplainable.

Another strategy is to focus on a person’s strengths that persist even when there is significant cognitive impairment. These include the senses, past memories, physical skills and routines. You can translate these strengths into meaningful activities involving music, arts, nature, pets, storytelling, exercises and religious or other related rit"uals.

There are innumerable examples: Take a walk around the neighborhood or at a local park or mall; look through photo albums or watch movies that may trigger fond memories; sing songs; attend religious services together; or if the person's native language is not English, and you both speak it, try having a conversation.

When considering several activities, ask yourself the following questions ahead of time: Can they easily participate in it? Does it bring stimulation, joy or meaning in the moment? Does it need to be adapted in some way to make it more accessible and comfortable for them?

Going to a show or concert is a great idea, for instance, but may be but too taxing for some. Instead, host a small gathering in their home to watch a recording of the same or a similar show on a large screen. Eating at a restaurant may work well for some people with mild dementia, but a festive meal at home with familiar foods and friends may be easier when they have more advanced symptoms. Plan ahead so that the environment both meets their needs and elevates their abilities.

Remember that these individuals are living with dementia, surviving the challenges and still retaining value as a person and the ability to find joy and meaning in life. Give to them what you would want for yourself if one day you are walking the same path.

Read more here.

"What they would do to others, they assume others would do to them."

In The Federalist, Nathanael Blake writes,

Declaring that America is on the verge of authoritarianism is normal, even expected, in prestigious publications. It has been conventional since President Trump was elected.

For all his faults, however, Trump has done little to expand or consolidate presidential power. If Trump appears as a plausible strongman, then the government in general and the presidency in particular have too much power. Much of the progressive anxiety about authoritarianism results from projecting their own philosophy of government onto their political opponents. What they would do to others, they assume others would do to them.

...Fascism and other forms of authoritarian government require concentrated and unconstrained state power. Thus, genuine anti-fascism opposes the expansion and consolidation of government power, and by this measure the American Constitution is one of the most successful anti-fascist systems of government ever established. Above all else, the Founders feared arbitrary power and the elevation of will over law. This fear was rooted in knowledge of history, human nature, and their experiences with self-government and the British.

...From the protestors to the pundits, progressives should reflect on the wisdom of a limited and divided government. An unlimited government is only a bad leader or cabal away from authoritarianism, but there is little reason to fear a government that is constrained within our constitutional limits. Adherence to our constitutional system of government remains the surest prophylactic against authoritarianism.

Read more here.

Socialism requires a totalitarian dictatorship

At Mises Institute, George Reisman makes

two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

...The requirements of enforcing a system of price and wage controls shed major light on the totalitarian nature of socialism — most obviously, of course, on that of the German or Nazi variant of socialism, but also on that of Soviet-style socialism as well.

...We can start with the fact that the financial self-interest of sellers operating under price controls is to evade the price controls and raise their prices. Buyers otherwise unable to obtain goods are willing, indeed, eager to pay these higher prices as the means of securing the goods they want. In these circumstances, what is to stop prices from rising and a massive black market from developing?

The answer is a combination of severe penalties combined with a great likelihood of being caught and then actually suffering those penalties.

...But the mere existence of such penalties is not enough. The government has to make it actually dangerous to conduct black-market transactions. It has to make people fear that in conducting such a transaction they might somehow be discovered by the police, and actually end up in jail. In order to create such fear, the government must develop an army of spies and secret informers. For example, the government must make a storekeeper and his customer fearful that if they engage in a black-market transaction, some other customer in the store will report them.

Because of the privacy and secrecy in which many black-market transactions can be conducted, the government must also make anyone contemplating a black-market transaction fearful that the other party might turn out to be a police agent trying to entrap him. The government must make people fearful even of their long-time associates, even of their friends and relatives, lest even they turn out to be informers.

In sum, therefore, the requirements merely of enforcing price-control regulations is the adoption of essential features of a totalitarian state, namely, the establishment of the category of "economic crimes," in which the peaceful pursuit of material self-interest is treated as a criminal offense, and the establishment of a totalitarian police apparatus replete with spies and informers and the power of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.

...A socialist government totally annihilates these freedoms. It turns the press and every public forum into a vehicle of hysterical propaganda in its own behalf, and it engages in the relentless persecution of everyone who dares to deviate by so much as an inch from its official party line.

Read more here.

Are you vulnerable to being brainwashed?

At The Federalist, Stella Morabito asks us to

Consider for a moment today’s culture, which is saturated with the constant agitation of political correctness. It rarely allows for any real discussion or debate without automatic vilification of those deemed politically incorrect. Sadly, this is especially true in the very place where there is a tradition of people expecting to engage in real debate: the college campus.

...This acceptance of the anti-thought nature of political correctness is pretty much everywhere: 95 percent of the mass media promote it, 95 percent of celebrity culture promotes it, and obviously, on college campuses, the academics are 95 percent in compliance with political correctness.

You can’t deny that cult-like tribunals against “wrongthink” are pretty much everywhere––in the media, in celebrity culture, in our legislatures, among judges, in human resource departments all over the corporate world, and most obviously, on college campuses, where youth are scared to death of being ostracized for expressing a politically incorrect thought.

Consider also how many Americans mindlessly parrot the perceived popular opinion along with its empty talking points that are never up for debate. In fact, there’s very little debate happening today. When real debate happens, it gets shouted down or pushed into a corner of the internet dubbed the “intellectual dark web.” Increasingly, our minds seem to be operating in a dangerous state of isolation, especially with increasing censorship and control over our conversations by mass media and tech titans. How is such constant censorship not cult-like?

Read more here.

Trump versus the Fed and big banks

Roger L. Simon writes that

The real danger to the president's reelection chances comes from the investment giant Goldman Sachs:

Goldman Sachs believes the U.S. economy will slow significantly in the second half of next year as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates and the effects of the tax cut fade.
"Growth is likely to slow significantly next year, from a recent pace of 3.5 percent-plus to roughly our 1.75 percent estimate of potential by end-2019," wrote Jan Hatzius, chief economist for the investment bank, in a note to clients on Sunday. "We expect tighter financial conditions and a fading fiscal stimulus to be the key drivers of the deceleration

Whatever the case, powerful forces will be aligned against Trump on the economic front. Admit it or not, many of his political and media adversaries will be rooting for a recession, the more serious the better, even though the minorities they pretend to support will suffer most.

We could call this Cloward-Piven light, this time spear-headed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Co., for whom the worse the economy does, the better. With any luck it will lead to socialism and the impoverishment of everyone. (Well, except for the leaders.)

But what can Trump do? Much will be a sophisticated balancing act. The tariff situation with China needs to be finessed particularly carefully. Most would agree that China's behavior has been egregious and previous administrations virtually absent when it came to confronting it, yet still this must be handled with greatest skill. The Chinese play a long game incomprehensible to most Westerners.

Nevertheless, a decent trade agreement with China might force Goldman to revise its prediction quickly. More importantly, it might preserve and enhance the already booming economy to such an extent that Trump would walk effortlessly into a second term.

Read more here.

Praying for rain

Gerard Van der Leun was in New York on 9-11 and in Paradise, California this month, where he lost his house and possessions. He remembers that after 9-11 everyone was hoping for rain, and the same thing is now happening in Paradise.

And we were not restored by the rains then and these rains will not restore us now. Like a root fire, it will burn on inside all of us. We’ve all been changed. Changed utterly.

Read more here.

How much longer will the Fed keep tightening?

In Alt-Market, Brandon Smith writes,

Around three years ago, in September 2015, I wrote an article titled ‘The Real Reasons Why The Fed Will Hike Interest Rates‘ in which I predicted that the Federal Reserve, in the face of criticism, would soon pursue a program of interest rate hikes into economic weakness. I argued that this plan would be somewhat similar to what the Fed did in the early 1930’s; an action that prolonged the Great Depression for many more years. So far, my prediction has proven to be correct.

Smith believes that

The Fed Will Continue Tightening Until Everything Breaks

Read his thoughts here.

17 children in one school are changing gender!

A courageous teacher has brought to the attention of writer Sanchez Manning in The Daily Mail about a single school in Britain in which

School has SEVENTEEN children changing gender as teacher says vulnerable pupils are being 'tricked' into believing they are the wrong sex.

Read the astonishing report here.

The Media turns on Facebook and Google

Charles Hugh Smith writes at Of Two Minds,

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Liberal Scorned: The Media Turns on Facebook and Google

Big Media so desperately wanted a partner in its faux-liberal virtue-signaling that it overlooked the abundant evidence that Facebook and Google are only interested in reaping billions of dollars in ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. These are corporations, after all, and just like the corporations that own Big Media, maximizing profits is their sole raison d'etre, self-congratulatory preening claims of public service wonderfulness aside.

Here's the ugly truth: Facebook and Google are profit-maximizing quasi-monopolies who will do anything to protect their monopolies. Just like all the other monopolies that had to be busted up to protect the public from their predatory power.

Read more here.

The three chambers

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez speaks about the three chambers of Congress, then corrects herself and says the three chambers of government. Mark Steyn says that would be the Special Counsel, the Broward County Elections Office, and the judge who gave Jim Accosta his press pass back!

He'll take it "in a New York Minute!"

Joe DiGenova says he would take the Attorney General job "in a New York Minute!" He also recommended his wife, Victoria Toensing, and Andrew McCarthy!

This will be interesting

Here is something interesting. Ace of Spades reports,

Sixteen Democrats Sign Letter Vowing to Vote Against Nancy Pelosi's Bid To Become Speaker Again
—Ace of Spades
A candidate for Speaker of the House needs 218 votes. Assuming all Republicans vote against Nancy Pelosi (an assumption we shouldn't make, because Trump claims he'll get Republicans to vote for Pelosi), then she can only afford to lose 15 Democrat votes out of the 233 they have.

Sixteen Democrats signed a letter stating they will vote against Pelosi, and three other Democrats have vowed to vote against her previously.

So unless Trump actually does convince Republicans to vote for Pelosi -- which would make her Speakership illegitimate to many Democrats (whoopsie) -- she can't win at the moment.

Leftism vs. Judeo Christian belief systems

Bookworm is blogging today about Leftism vs. Judeo Christian belief systems. It is a good read here.

Huckabee interviews Sanders!

An excellent interview. He must be a very proud papa!

"Little Adam Schitt" and "the real collusion"

Apparently, actor Randy Quaid likes to read president Trump's tweets. Here he reads about "Little Adam Schitt" and "the real collusion."

"In the land of unanswered prayer, we follow His lead."

In A Holy Experience, guest writer Jason Hague asks,

Why must we decide between happiness and sorrow, denial and despair, the joy and the aching?

Hague writes about his relationship with his autistic son.

On this journey with Jack, I have found treasures in my darkness, and the greatest of them all was this: aching joy.

The Lord taught me how to sigh in pain, how to weep in gladness, and how to trust during days of hope deferred.

It was not an easy road to walk. It still isn’t easy, and it isn’t safe.

Rather, it is a confounding country full of myths and mirages. Here, faith resembles denial, settledness looks like surrender, and hope is the scariest creature of all.

If you are with me here in this land, you know all about discouragement.

But look up, friend. The path before us is paved with secret riches.

To embrace it is to embrace the terrifying tension of God’s inaugurated but unfinished Kingdom: the already and the not yet, the treasure in the field, costing us everything but giving us even more.

It is the place where I thank God for my son, who is enough, and in the next breath, I beg God for more.

The road ahead is dangerous but not barren.

There is sustenance here, because Christ Himself is here, and He goes before us.

He walked this path already, this Man of Sorrows, and endured all that we must endure and more.

But He did it all for the joy set before Him.

In the land of unanswered prayer, we follow His lead.

He does not hover above us on the winds of false expectations.

Rather, He stands next to us with His own humble scars, beckoning us forward.

Read more here.

Kasich? No way!

Ann Althouse tells us that WaPo's Jennifer Rubin proposes someone take on Trump in the primaries for the 2020 election, which would pave the way for John Kasich. Ugh! Read the theory here.

"...ignorance spawns arrogance. And arrogance is necessary to push one’s partisan ignorance on others."

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

In the post-election aftermath, Republicans are wondering about how they can capture that missing 2-5 percent of the electorate that lost them the House of Representatives.

Could they pry away 40 percent of the institutionalized Democratic Latino vote on delivery of a full-employment economy of rising wages? Can they win over 20 percent of the African-American electorate on the basis of more jobs and less competition from illegal immigrants?

Can Trump tone down his ad hominem invective and tweeting to reassure an additional 10 percent of independent and middle-class suburban women that his national security agenda, free-market prosperity, traditionalism, law-and-order, and national sovereignty policies ensure greater tranquility, safety, and opportunity—even if they are not packaged in the manner of his more mellifluous and vacuous “presidential” predecessor?

Republicans, in deer-in-the-headlights-style, appear shocked that they are increasingly prone to winning the vote on Election Day only to lose it in the ensuing weeks when absentee ballots and what-not filter in with astounding Democratic majorities. Someone is spending a lot of money to get the absentee voting ballot out, correctly marked, and returned. And whatever that “lot” is, it is killing Republican candidates.

Yet there is a larger obstacle to achieving that long-term 51 percent Trump solution along with the shorter-term strategy of matching Democratic absentee ballots with Republican absentee ballots. Conservatives have lost entirely the culture and establishment wars. The result is that they are besieged by a circle of hostile progressive, but quite establishment institutions that are relentless.

Imagine the traditionalist as living in synopticon—a suspect that is the target of 24/7 viewing, indoctrination, and conditioning by progressive auditors. In other words, a 40-45 percent minority of Americans is relentlessly lectured, sermonized, demonized, and neutered by a 360- degree ring of prying institutional overseers.

There is no escape. There is no respite. There is no quarter given.

The media has become an extension of the progressive movement, partly because its farm teams are the universities and the upper-middle class suburban professional classes. Journalists, such as Jim Rutenberg and Christiane Amanpour, concede they can no longer stay neutral in the era of Trump—“neutral” in the sense that old partisans of a bygone age like Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather were careful to mask their progressivism on the air.

Not now. The major networks and public affiliates are proudly overt in their efforts to oppose conservative traditionalism often defined (for now) as the agenda of Donald Trump—in 93 percent negative coverage fashion, as is the case with MSNBC/NBC and CNN according to the liberal Shorenstein Center.

This article gets better and better. No paragraph is lacking in brilliance. Read it here